An outdated website design costs a business much more than its periodic adaptation to modern trends and the requirements of the target audience. After all, more than a third of visitors will immediately leave it if they consider it insufficiently modern - we will talk about this a little later.

That is why large companies update their websites every 2-3 years, adapting them to modern trends and visuals.

In this article, we will analyze which trends in web design will be relevant in 2025, and tell you how companies can develop their brand and not get lost in the competitive struggle.

Why It's Important to Follow Web Design Trends

Heatmap of the website home page and the elements that receive the most attention

According to research, the first impression time of a modern website or mobile app design is only 2.5 seconds for a user. And it depends almost entirely on design decisions.

Scientists from the Missouri University of Science and Technology conducted a large-scale study of how exactly the human brain perceives content on websites. Using an eye tracking system, scientists determined which elements of a website users pay attention to first, and which of them influence the formation of the first impression.

The researchers fully confirmed the thesis that it is the design of the site that forms the first impression, because users first looked at the visual elements, and then at the text and functionality.

For each participant in the study, the experts tracked a detailed path of how exactly the user views the site when they see it for the first time.

It turned out that visitors first pay attention to the central visual of the site, then to the logo and general style, and then read the menu elements and headings. On average, the gaze lingers on one element from 0.1 to 0.6 seconds. Users notice the main text almost last - they read it only after they have assessed the visual part and headings.

User's gaze path when first visiting a site

Detailed path of a person's gaze during their first visit to a website

In some cases, a positive brain response is formed in 0.15 seconds — long before a person has time to evaluate all the elements. Therefore, scientists have come to the conclusion that the overall design of the page is also extremely important.

When a user sees an outdated website design, he subconsciously believes that it is not being developed, which automatically reduces trust. Website design and development services help create a modern and attractive interface that inspires trust and increases interest in your business.

According to analytics, visitors leaving a website with an outdated design account for as much as 38.5 %. Therefore, experts advise updating the website design every 2-3 years — during this time, it has time to become morally obsolete and begins to negatively affect conversions, lead generation, and purchases.

How To Easily Create A Trendy Website

How to design a website? In 2025, you can create your trendy website using any website builder, such as Tilda or Wix: from a one-page landing page to a huge e-commerce platform. Intuitive design and a simple visual interface allow you to develop an attractive and functional website without programming knowledge.

Use ready-made templates, add your own semantic blocks or create a website from scratch: the variability and ease of use of the online builder will help you create exactly the website design you need.

And immediately after its launch, you can connect tools for working with clients in a few clicks: email newsletters, chatbots for Instagram, Facebook and Telegram, as well as a convenient best CRM system.

Functional Minimalism In UI And UX

The trend for minimalist design is here to stay and will be relevant for a long time. People are tired of overloaded websites where it is impossible to quickly find the information they need.

84.6% of designers consider excessive homepage information a mistake for online businesses .

The best website designs are minimalist, based on the principles of simplicity, clarity and functionality. The style provides good usability, fast page loading, a high level of target conversion and always looks very modern.

The online store of the Zara brand was created in minimalism. The main page has only seven main buttons and no accompanying text. The headings are hidden in an inconspicuous drop-down menu in the upper left corner.

The main page of the Zara website is designed in minimalism

The style continues on the internal pages. Even on the heading pages there are many photos of products, but little text.

Minimalism in website design is especially often used by world-famous brands that already have a huge number of loyal customers. And for small companies, this is an opportunity to competently conduct brand management if you do not limit interaction with the audience only to the website, but add social networks and mailings.

Authentic Illustrations

Website layout created using the Midjourney neural network

Over the past year, brands have been actively testing the capabilities of artificial intelligence and neural networks for business tasks. Including the creation of images, illustrations, and even design layouts for websites. Will this trend continue next year? No.

Getty Images conducted a large-scale study of Internet users' opinions. And it turned out that more and more people are concerned about the excessive spread of artificial intelligence-based tools.

3 out of 4 respondents admitted that they cannot be 100% sure of the origin of photographs on websites. Although AI-generated illustrations have their drawbacks, most ordinary users are unable to answer who exactly created the image: a person or a neural network.

And 98% of respondents say that the authenticity of images on websites is one of the important factors by which a brand can earn users' trust.

Neural networks will continue to be actively implemented in business processes, but not in design. AI-powered web design can create generated illustrations that have a negative impact on the first impression of the target audience and become a sign of bad taste. In addition, they negatively affect the effectiveness of SEO, since search engine algorithms have already learned to recognize generated content with high accuracy.

What does this mean? To remain competitive in the market in 2025, companies need to create a unique style for their own websites without using artificial intelligence. Website design with AI has a negative impact on the indicators, so the market is returning to the services of professional designers and illustrators.

Kinetic Typography In Web Design

Moving and shape-changing text has long been used in advertising and video production. It is an effective way to make words easier to perceive and to unobtrusively attract the user's attention to them.

Previously, kinetic typography was rarely used on websites due to the difficulties in implementation. But with the emergence of modern web animation plugins and add-ons, as well as the active development of motion design, this is becoming easier.

Kinetic typography is most often used on landing pages and websites of product companies. Usually, this is only slightly animated text, simply helping the user to better perceive the information.

Alex Lab brand uses kinetic copy to enhance the experience of their homepage

Also, moving text can be used as an element of a unique website style. This approach requires serious efforts from designers and developers, and the price of web design for such a website in Dubai is higher, but visually such projects look simply wonderful - this is especially important for brands working specifically with creating the appearance of online and offline products.

From static blocks that are easy to miss during fast scrolling of the page, text turns into an interesting tool for attracting attention. Even minimal animation greatly improves the perception of information on the site and has a positive effect on the first impression of the web page design.

The Innovators:

On the Elva agency website, kinetic typography is an important element of user interaction

Retro Style In Website Development

Monochrome site in the style of old photos

Monochrome website in the style of old photographs

Everything new is well forgotten old. In ecommerce website design this rule also works. Retro looks stylish, attracts attention well and stands out against the background of modern projects.

It is interesting that almost all retro trends are in trend: from colorful and bright collages in the style of the 80s to monochrome sepia, like in old photographs. For example, the Italian company Magneti Marelli, which produces car electronics, created a website for its centenary, showing the history of its work. Very thematic - and the retro style fits here perfectly.

Retro style in web design is not necessarily something very old

Often, brands use retro style on their websites to highlight the company’s rich history. However, it has many other uses.

For example, online media for girls and women Girlboss created a website look that resembles women’s magazines from the 90s and 00s, the times when they were most popular.

Retro style web design ideas are quite complex to work with. It’s not enough to simply create a website that looks old.

The most important thing here is to correctly convey the mood of the era, using current web development elements - the scripts in retro websites are still modern.

Dark Mode Of The Website

According to the results of a study by Google analysts, the total number of devices using dark mode is 82.7%. The vast majority of respondents answered that it is not as tiring for the eyes as light mode, looks more aesthetically pleasing and consumes less battery power.

Among programmers, it is even more: over 91% of IT specialists use a dark theme while working. However, it is in modern web design that dark mode is only just gaining popularity. Most social networks already use it, but on company websites it is still a fairly rare feature.

Visual comparison of Instagram app light and dark theme

But even here there are enough opportunities to turn an ordinary tool into a cool feature of the portal. For example, the studio of game design of pixel elements has moved away from the classic black and white combination. For the light theme it uses a shade of olive, and for the dark one - a shade of gray.

light and dark website themes The pixel shop

An unconventional vision of light and dark website themes

Here is a portfolio site of an interactive designer from Norway, who took a very creative approach to the design of his own site. The portfolio itself is presented as a bike ride. When using a light theme, the cyclist rides during the day, and when you turn on the dark one, it's night.

Portfolio as a bike ride

Even a user-friendly tool can be turned into an interesting feature that will become a competitive advantage. More and more studios are experimenting with formats and designs, using the latest web design tools to stand out from the competition and attract users. And it works.

Parallax Scrolling

This is a web design technique where background images move slower than foreground visuals as you scroll down the page. This creates the effect of page depth and the illusion of three-dimensionality.

As an example, here is the website of Japanese design studio Hadaka. There is almost no text there because the designers decided that a visual demonstration of their capabilities would attract customers much better than a regular story. And so it turned out.

Parallax scrolling can enliven almost any website. And if it is used as the basis for user experience, the dynamism of scenes and unusual visual images can seriously boost the conversion rate and immediately show the team as first-class professionals.

The main problem with high-quality parallax scrolling is that it is very difficult to make. Such interactivity of elements is achieved only by a huge number of scripts, so the site loads much longer than in ordinary projects. And on weak computers, the page load time can generally reach a minute - too much for commercial projects.

But we see that the number of such sites with parallax scrolling of the highest quality has increased significantly recently. Agencies and brands are actively testing different methods of influencing potential audiences, so the visual perception of the project is even more important than before.

Parallax scrolling example

Asymmetry Of Site Elements And «Broken grid»

Users are used to all elements on websites being symmetrical — where they are expected to be seen. However, it is precisely on the unfulfilled expectations of the target audience that websites play, where visuals and interactive elements are not ideally located. They can overlap, not use straight lines, or be placed unevenly.

For example, on a website for freelancers, several elements are layered at once. This attracts attention, looks unusual, but at the same time everything remains functional.

Three functional elements are superimposed on each other

But it is not necessary to break the entire visual grid on the site. A non-standard user experience can be achieved with the help of asymmetry in only one coordinate. For example, Pinterest does this. The image suggestions on the main page are vertically symmetrical, but differ in height, which creates the effect of a “broken grid”, but does not feel strange or uncomfortable.

Asymmetry of images on Pinterest

Broken symmetry in functional blocks is often used as an additional web design tool to attract attention. There are not too many sites where asymmetry is presented as the basis of the user experience. However, the tool does the job well, and we are sure that in 2025 the number of such non-standard projects will only increase.

Inclusive Design

The contrast mode button has been moved to the site header

7.7% of PC users download a screen reader - an application that recognizes printed text and reproduces it using a synthesized voice.
That is why inclusive website design has become extremely important in recent years. Not only from the standpoint of humanity and accessibility for everyone, but also web design companies in Dubai in general. People with vision, hearing or color perception problems will first of all pay attention to businesses that make their content more accessible specifically for them.

For example, the software development company HubSpot added a contrasting color scheme to the site, which helps people with impaired color perception perceive information. It is very easy and quick to do, but it will really help people with color blindness to use the site.

It is good practice when creating website design and development to make the site responsive and ensure correct layout when increasing the page zoom to 300%, add alternative text to pictures and make content compatible with screen readers.

Inclusivity does not require any extra effort when developing a site, but it can greatly simplify communication with the brand and seriously improve its perception by the audience.

Micro Animations

You can think through the elements of a website in as much detail as you like. Even small details often affect the overall impression of the portal and overall conversion.

You can animate any elements of a website, but most often movement is added to the cursor or buttons. For example, on the website of the travel agency Elivi, the cursor is framed by a circle that transforms when the user hovers it over various functional elements of the page: it increases in size, changes color, becomes square or turns into a line.

Micro-animation of the cursor on the brand's main page

Even very small animations can help to liven up a website and make it more enjoyable for the user.

In most cases, microanimations do not require much work when developing an e-commerce website design, since there are now quite a lot of ready-made web design assets that you can purchase and directly insert into your site without unnecessary complications.

Data Visualization

Visualization is one of the best ways to quickly and fully convey any information to the target audience. Moreover, data visualization perfectly attracts attention not only to specific data, but also to the resource as a whole.

The NASA space agency has launched an asteroid and comet observation mode on its own website. In real time, users can find out the trajectory and location of small celestial bodies and spacecraft that are exploring them. And if you click on any object, the site will provide detailed information on it.

NASA asteroid and comet observation mode

Data visualization with the ability to drill down in real time using asteroids as an example

Data visualization can also be used on company and organization websites when it is important to show experience, present results or dynamics of the team's work. For example, the international medical center IntraHealth showed the geography of the countries in which they worked or once worked.

Visualization greatly diversifies the user experience, but allows you to fully display all the necessary information.

Geography of the organization's work on an interactive map

We recommend that you contact the professionals at our web design and website development agency, as an old-fashioned website can harm user trust and reduce conversion rates, highlighting the need for frequent updates. Focusing on cutting-edge design not only boosts your brand image but also optimizes website performance, leading to increased user interaction and business success.